What Would Mitt Do?

I can't believe I'm looking for Mitt Romney's "garments." It's a Tuesday morning in Columbia, South Carolina, and as the Republican presidential hopeful struggles with a malfunctioning microphone, I'm studying his freshly pressed, diaphanous white shirt, searching for evidence of the church-sanctioned set of underclothes Mormons wear to remind themselves of their personal commitment to God. As a Mormon (nonpracticing, albeit), I've been offended by the barrage of insensitive questions Romney has had to field about his faith, no more so than when, in 2005, an Atlantic Monthly reporter asked him, "Do you wear the temple garments?" How different is a Mormon donning garments from a Muslim woman covering her head with a scarf? I thought then. Would any reporter dare ask Joe Lieberman if he wears a yarmulke when the Senate is in session? But here I am doing it myself.... I think I can make out an outline under his sleeve, but then again, it could just be a T-shirt.

I'm what you call a "Jack Mormon": slang used in my native Salt Lake City to describe nonpracticing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Full disclosure—until I started this story, I didn't know that the term supposedly originated circa 1834, after church members were expelled from Missouri's Jackson County and fled to the more friendly Clay County. The LDS sympathizers were labeled "Jack" Mormons.) Today, it generally characterizes someone like me—who no longer attends church and can't abide by the LDS rules of no coffee, no swearing, no alcohol, no premarital sex, but who also still feels attached to the faith. Think Easter Catholic or Yom Kippur Jew. At Thanksgiving dinner with my family (we're all of the Jack breed), I'm the one who "blesses the food" with a fairly standard, though extemporaneous, Mormon-minded prayer, meaning I start with "Dear Heavenly Father" and end with "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Then I reach for my wineglass.

It's not that any of these restrictions on its own is necessarily onerous, but together they define a lifestyle that is too constricting for me. At heart, I just don't believe denying my appetites will bring me closer to God. I stopped going to church in junior high school, mainly because my parents never forced me to attend and, as I got older, few of my friends were "good" Mormons. These days, I don't feel the need for organized religion in my life, but if I were to seek out a place of worship I'd probably start with a Mormon church, though I'd have to work through my discomfort with the history of polygamy, as well as its present-day vestiges: the exclusion of women from key LDS leadership roles.

I actually have a routine down to answer the inevitable question Salt Lake City natives get when they dare stray beyond Utah's borders: Are you Mormon? I start by saying that I'm nonpracticing, but, but, but I was baptized at age eight and have extended family members who are devout Mormons. In the eight years I've lived in New York, I've convinced myself that the reason I'm so careful to lay out my LDS roots is that I want to defend, or in some way protect, the faith in which I feel I have a stake. Sometimes, however, I find myself answering too quickly, as if eager to assure my tonier citified counterparts: Don't worry, I'm not technically a Mormon. This, even though I find the common perception of Mormons—overly wholesome, Big Love polygamous, and, let's face it, weird—ridiculous.

Romney—who, by the way, received dual graduate degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law, made a killing in the consulting industry, helped rescue the scandal-ridden 2002 Winter Olympics, and served as governor of the very blue state of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007—is what you call a model Mormon. He served a mission (most LDS men do) in France for two-and-a-half years at 19; completed his undergrad degree at Brigham Young University (the church-owned university planted in Provo, Utah); and married Ann Romney, an LDS convert, in the Salt Lake Temple (proof in itself—only members in good standing get a "temple recommend" and are allowed to enter). In A Mormon in the White House?, writer and talk-show host Hugh Hewitt highlights Romney's service as both a "bishop" in his local ward in Belmont, Massachusetts, and later a president in his "stake"—a collection of wards—in Boston. "The LDS Church is a layman's church, administered at every level except the very highest by...volunteers who keep their day jobs," Hewitt writes. "Mitt Romney has graduated through all the various levels of those duties, just as he was confirmed at the appropriate time to the two levels of 'priesthood' all Mormon men attain if they keep the precepts of their faith."

Most presidential candidates, especially a Republican hoping to woo the Family Values-loving right, would parade this kind of flawless religious report card. That is, if they were a Methodist or a Baptist. In an election where differences are a selling point and the anticipation for the first woman or African-American president is crackling, Romney, or maybe more accurately, his advisers, have arduously tried to pull the spotlight away from the fact that if elected, he'd be the first Mormon president. Instead, Romney focuses on his years toiling in the private sector, first at Bain & Company, a Boston management-consulting firm, and then as captain of the spin-off private equity investment venture Bain Capital, which he ran for 15 years.

The Romney campaign's reluctance to trumpet their man's Mormon bona fides is a product of hard-line doctrinal differences between evangelical Christians and the LDS church (differences about which I was blissfully ignorant until Romney became a serious contender for the White House). The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, is one of many touchy spots. LDS members consider it a supplement to the Bible, another testament of Jesus Christ, while evangelicals count the Bible as the only holy book and many don't consider Mormons to be Christians (though Mormons themselves beg to differ). "It leaves Latter Day Saints utterly bewildered," says church spokesman Michael Otterson, who met with the editorial boards of a half-dozen major media outlets as part of a program to educate people about Mormonism in conjunction with Romney's run. "[Christ] is not only incorporated in the name of our church, but if you mixed with Mormons you'd know that the centrality of Christ in their faith is simply not in dispute. There's an enormous amount of common ground, and to dismiss us as non-Christians is frankly not helpful."

Of course, while traipsing around South Carolina, the evangelical heartland that is holding one of the election's earliest primaries, I'm expecting to detect some of that religious prejudice. Instead, at the Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency, down the road from the Christian Bob Jones University, I meet adoptive parents Tamar and Marius Pundys, who've just finished taking a tour with Romney of the one-story red-brick building. They tell me they're still not sure who they'll vote for in the South Carolina primary in January, but the Mormon factor is irrelevant. "There's a characterization about people in the South or religious people that they make choices based entirely on their religious belief," Marius says. His wife, Tamar, jumps in. "People think we're not thinkers and we're very narrow-minded. That's not necessarily the case."

Romney has managed to wrangle crucial endorsements from Christian conservatives including Paul Weyrich (the founding president of the Heritage Foundation and a cofounder of the Moral Majority, the religious lobbying organization once led by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell) and Bob Jones III, the grandson of the founder of the namesake Christian college—a bit of a stunner, considering Jones once called Mormonism and Catholicism "cults which call themselves Christian." And in a Hail Mary attempt to unite the Christian right to derail Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mark DeMoss, a publicist whose clients include the Reverend Franklin Graham (son of Billy), in October penned a letter to evangelical leaders urging them to support Romney. "I fully recognize some evangelicals take issue with me for supporting a Mormon for the office of President, and I respect their concerns," he wrote. "Indeed, I had to deal with the same concerns in my own heart before offering to help Governor Romney. But I concluded that I am more concerned that a candidate shares my values than he shares my theology."

Hewitt, for one, argues that the Mormon issue is dissipating for many on the religious right. "When Bob Jones endorses you, you've made the in-roads you need to make," he says. Obviously, however, conservative Christians don't have much of a choice at this point, with Giuliani topping national polls (though former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee is on the rise). Throw your weight behind the churchgoing family man, even if it's the wrong church, or expect to be faced with a candidate who's pro-choice (even if he's not exactly broadcasting it via megaphone these days) and has two ex-wives.

Part of me, I guess the Mormonish part, has wished Romney wouldn't be so desperate to accept evangelicals' half-hearted support, that he would stand up more for his own beliefs. During a closed-door Q&A with Bob Jones students, faculty, and alumni (an alumnus disgruntled by the school chancellor's endorsement secretly taped the event and sent the recording to CNN), Romney was as solicitous as could be. When an audience member asked him about his relationship with Jones, he replied, "We don't talk about doctrines of churches, all right? Because he says, 'Look, your church is wrong,' and I say, 'Fine.'"

Romney also has gone out of his way, or so it seems, to embrace a socially conservative agenda. Pro-choice during his run for governor six years ago, Romney is now adamantly pro-life and touts a Constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage—notwithstanding the fact that during a 1994 U.S. Senate campaign he boasted that he was a better advocate of gay rights than Ted Kennedy. His pro-life conversion came midway through his governorship, he says, during a debate over stem-cell research in the state legislature. "I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead—to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited," he wrote, announcing his pro-life stance in a 2005 Boston Globe editorial. (For what it's worth, Romney's current positions more neatly line up with the LDS church's: Mormons condemn homosexual behavior and oppose abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or when the mother's health is in jeopardy or the unborn child is not capable of surviving.)

Even if evangelicals are seeing the Romney-light, there's also, you know, the rest of America. In a Gallup poll, 66 percent of respondents said the country wasn't ready for a Mormon president. I have to imagine the resistance has something to do with the way the LDS church is perceived as a youngish faith, featuring wacky theorems and fringe sacraments. In a Newsweek cover story on him, for instance, Romney was questioned about whether he'd engaged in "baptisms for the dead," describing the process as "secret temple rituals." Growing up, I never thought of the ceremony as so outré—it's basically a proxy baptism, in which a living person is baptized (by immersion) as a stand-in for an ancestor who never had the privilege. My friends and extended family went to baptisms for the dead as matter-of-factly as a Catholic goes to confession.

Some of the fear people had about installing a Mormon in the White House may have been allayed after Romney ended months of speculation and delivered the speech—the one comparable to John F. Kennedy's in 1960 about how his Catholicism wouldn't influence his presidency. After a glowing introduction by former President George H. W. Bush (who actually has cred with many Americans, compared to, well, his son), Romney made it clear that he believed "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind," though he acknowledged that his church's beliefs about Jesus may not track with those of other faiths. While he uttered the "M" word only once—and took plenty of heat for it from the pundits—the speech came off as heartfelt rather than as an effort to merely say the right thing, a common jab at Romney. When the speech was over and the candidate hugged his sons and his wife, he seemed relieved, and I have to confess that I felt teary: Mitt had done Mormons proud!

Apparently even Robert Redford has a problem with me, or more precisely, with real Mormons. "They are very adept at not being fazed and speaking fluently and gracefully," Redford told The Washington Times. "Why? Because every single male who's a Mormon goes on a mission for two years when they're 19 or 20. They learn how to deflect blows and stay on message.... But it's plastic." Can you imagine if the actor mused about people of another faith that way? Because so many generations of Jews have worked in finance, they're incredibly good with money. While it's one thing to say Mormons emerge from missions with solid public-speaking skills—that jump is impossible not to make when you're trailing the silken-tongued Romney—it's quite another to dismiss them all as a bunch of robots.

These are the moments I want to rally around Romney—when he's taking hits for his faith. I'm sure I'd be less stirred by him if he weren't Mormon, if I didn't buoy him up as some kind of bastion of religious freedom. My reasoning, ironically enough, is the opposite of what I expect from non-Mormons: I want them to ignore Romney's religion, or at least the particularities of it.

But could I vote for the man? I just can't see myself supporting someone whose position on moral issues leans so far to the right. And while I was moved by Romney's candor and willingness to discuss such a personal subject as his (our?) religion in his December speech, at the same time I couldn't help wishing that we were back in JFK's time. Kennedy unequivocally stated that he believed in the separation of church and state, but Romney seemed skittish about the concept, lambasting those who perceive religion as "merely a private affair with no place in public life" and those who'd "remove from the public domain any acknowledgement of God." Not that this greatly distinguishes Romney from other candidates: Hillary and Barack are quick to invoke the higher power, and November's CNN/YouTube GOP debate was a veritable revival meeting.

I guess, in the end, I'm partial to the moderate Mitt: the guy who vowed to protect a woman's right to choose, dispersed a flyer during his 2002 campaign wishing Boston's gay community a "Great Pride Weekend!", and proved he could work with Democratic legislators by closing a billion-dollar-plus budget deficit his first year as Massachusetts governor. I could have faith in that man.

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